


In Perfect Balance, Take me Back

by literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Bisexuality, Car Accidents, Drinking, Gen, Pre-Canon, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-12
Updated: 2014-11-12
Packaged: 2018-02-25 03:55:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2607533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte/pseuds/literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He trusted Alex with his life at the worst of times.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Perfect Balance, Take me Back

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from mariee sioux's "white fanged foreverness"
> 
> "And here on this pile of driftwood / I will / carefully string up / stick by stick / thin by thick / bit by bit / rib by rib / rib by rib / rib by rib / rib by rib / until a marble of you dances and chants / 'In perfect balance take me back. / In perfect balance take me back. / I've learned my lesson.' "

The headlights spilling across the empty road ahead only make the forest outside Jay's window look darker. Brian makes a joke about how Sarah always gets shotgun when Seth drives, and everyone whoops and laughs. The tips of Seth's ears turn bright red.

Jay blinks, too groggy to process the combined noise of the radio and the chatter. The jokes and jabs at Alex – who isn't here, and he feels almost guilty for being thankful for that, to snap back – all seem to blur together.

He watches the trees streak by and thinks participating in the conversation would probably just give him a worse headache, anyway.

The car hits a bump; the windows shake and he almost spills his drink. Jay grips the half-empty beer in his hand so hard his knuckles turn white. He wishes he could relax and have fun on the joy ride with his friends, but he can't stop thinking about Alex, stomping off to his own car.

His backseat's stuffed full of tapes and Jay remembers summers in high school when they used to lay back there, planning ambitious dreams and plotting to rule the world. Jay thought Alex was an asshole, and Alex thought Jay was a pushover. They weren't the closest friends, but the type of friends who's interests just clicked – the weird queer kids who, like magnets, found each other years before they even knew they weren't what the world forced on them.

“So you're _not_ a girl?” Alex had asked, eyes full of questions that made anxiety creep under Jay's skin. But he was the only one who came to his birthday party, and four A.M. was always the time to say shit you might regret in the morning.

It was ninth grade, and he wore huge, ugly hoodies to hide his hips. It was ninth grade and he had no one else to tell.

“Yeah, that's right.”

“You're a transgender?”

Jay winced. “No, it's not...Don't say it like that. I'm a guy.”

Alex kept probing him with curious eyes, so he said, “A trans guy. Not _a_ transgender, but I am transgender, and a guy.”

Alex nodded, and reached for the last chip in the bowl on the floor. The t.v. turned to black as the credits rolled around, and he got up to change the tape.

He didn't ask about “the surgery,” or if Jay's parents knew, or any other awkward questions that would make Jay regret speaking at all, and Jay was grateful for the casual decency of Alex's reception.

Then Alex had said, putting in a horror movie they had stolen from his brother, “I'm bisexual, by the way.” 

Jay remembers the way his heart seized up in joy, and he would have trusted Alex if he was pointing a gun at him, at that moment.

“Same.”

Seth blasts the horn at someone's half-wild command, and Jay groans like tires squealing on an open road.

He forgot how to say no a while back, when he started hanging out more than ever before with Alex in college. As the car swerves, he figures Seth has never known the word at all.

Jay's never been in a car accident before. Maybe it's due to the fact that he hasn't been the one to drive since he started getting drunk every time he had to go into a social situation. Maybe it's due to the fact that, before college, he had never even touched a drop of alcohol. Now his hands are clammy around a bottle he pulled out of a icebox just thirty minutes ago, the beads of icy water rubbed off in his sweaty palms.

Around last spring he gave up being straight-edge. It wasn't that memorable, the first time he got drunk. In one hand he had a Dr. Pepper, and he reached for another slice of pizza with the other. He had his D&D character sheet in front of him, and the group was trying to find a way to fit Tim into their well-established campaign.

“There. Here is my beautiful character.” Tim put his pencil down with a flourish.

Brian leaned over to look at the very small dick he had doodled in the corner of the otherwise blank paper. “Did you make it in honor of Alex?”

It sent everyone into a fit of laughter. Amy's shoulders had shook as she giggled, digging her nails into the sofa in order to stay upright. Tim punched Brian on the shoulder as the group broke down with laughter – except for Alex, brooding at the edge of the circle. 

Jay chuckled nervously; he glanced out of the corner of his eye at Alex. He stared around at the raucous group and Jay felt as though he was condemning them all with his glare. It always felt like that when Alex was around.

Amy was the first to notice Alex wasn't laughing. “Hey, are you okay?”

“It's all in good humor, man,” Brian said, but the laughter died down when Alex continued to stare down at them, silent.

An awkward moment passed over the group, only broken by the click of Tim opening up the first beer of the night and his shout of, “To Alex!”

Alex had not smiled. The group settled back into an easy murmur of conversation as they passed around beers. Sneering, Alex handed one over to Jay. He had taken three sips until he realized with a start that he had never actually gotten drunk before. Despite all the concern of health classes over the years, he had never once been offered a beer.

The reasonable thing to have done would be to stay sober, in case Alex's temper reached a limit and he snapped at someone. Jay was always there to apologize for him, but that night he picked up a second can without anyone handing it over, and a third before he couldn't even roll the dice.

Unsurprisingly, Jay could not hold his alcohol well. Alex didn't drink that night.

Alex drove him and Amy home that night. The car ride was silent. Jay stared, glassy-eyed and almost puking at a speed bump, out the passenger window, and Amy was passed out in the backseat. He was slowly slipping into unconsciousness himself when Alex stomped on the breaks and Jay jerked forward, straining against the seat belt he had clumsily strapped on.

“Did you see that?” Alex's terrified whisper cut through the silence like a gunshot. His eyes swept over the street in front of them; he clenched the steering wheel, breathless.

Amy mumbled in her sleep. Jay was surprised she hadn't fallen. Alex wouldn't budge the car, so he looked out across the barren street for him and shook his head. Nothing but fences and streetlights.

It wasn't the beer making him feel sick when he looked back at Alex and saw something in the reflection of his glasses.

The queasy feeling didn't stop as Alex unlocked all the doors. He trusted Alex with his life at the worst of times. He did not trust that frightened, _feral_ look, nor the sound of the passenger door opening when he hadn't seen anyone on the street.

The first time he had gotten drunk wasn't memorable, because he couldn't remember what had happened.

He did remember how pale, tired, and strung-out Alex had looked - and how he looked the same way as he got in his own car and the rest of the group piled in Seth's. Jay wonders what would have happened if he had went with Alex, if he had asked him if he was alright, if he drove instead of Alex.

The car he's in now lurches. Jay's head smacks against the window and Brian slides against him – slams against him as Tim is thrown to the side as well. His drink flies out of hand.

Sarah screams. The world moves too fast – glass and tires and metal, all screeching. His head hits the seat in front of him, and he nearly passes out.

The car shudders to a stop, and the world is upside down. Blood trickles down a large gash on his forehead. Someone near him is sobbing. Jay coughs and peers out of the mangled dashboard.

Across the road, with the front smashed in and the headlights crushed, is Alex's car.

A head-on collision doesn't flip one car and leave the other with one huge dent.

He's drunk off his ass and in shock, but he recognizes, even from this distance, the frightened, _feral_ look in Alex's eyes. In the broken shards of glass scattered about the asphalt, he recognizes memories – Jay let Alex copy off his math homework too many times to count, Alex bought him his first binder so it wouldn't arrive at Jay's house and his parents' would see it – sifting away from him, until the night is dark and faceless, and the sobbing reaches a wail.


End file.
